Panel to review litigation policy Prime Minister to inaugurate state-of-the-art J&K tunnel

Parliament’s consultative committee attached to the law ministry will meet on Thursday to review the National Litigation Policy. Government litigation reportedly constitutes nearly half the total. However, there are no government sources to confirm the actual amount. The absence of this statistic is itself an indicator of how “interested” various governments have been in attempting to understand this problem or tackling it meaningfully.

On the occasion of the Delhi High Court’s golden jubilee in October 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had broached the problem of excessive government litigation. The Supreme Court, since the 1970s, has berated successive governments for being callous and mechanical in pursuing litigation. The Law Commission of India also studied this problem in its 126th Report in 1988, and made appropriate observations. Besides being a constraint on the public exchequer, government litigation has contributed to judicial backlog, affecting justice delivery. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will dedicate to the nation India's longest road tunnel, on the JammuSrinagar National Highway. It will reduce the distance between Jammu and Srinagar by nearly 30 km.

“The Prime Minister will inaugurate the ChenaniNashri tunnel on April 2,” Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), Jitendra Singh, told PTI. Modi will also address a public rally after the dedication, he said.

Work on the 9.2-km twin-tube tunnel, part of a 286km and four-lane project on the highway, started on May 23, 2011, in the lower Himalayan mountain range, and cost ~3,720 crore, officials said.

At an elevation of 1,200 metres, it will be the first in India to be equipped with a world-class "integrated tunnel control system," through which ventilation, fire control, signals, communication and electrical systems will be automatically actuated.

It will reduce the travel time between Jammu and Srinagar by two and a half hours.

The distance from Chenani and Nashri will now be 10.9 km, instead of the existing 41 km, Singh said.

Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) is to hand over the tunnel project to National Highways Authority of India after its inauguration. "The formal trial run was successfully completed for peak and offpeak hours between March 9 and March 15," said J S Rathore, project director at IL&FS.

Once the tunnel becomes operational, it will reduce traffic snarls on National Highway-1A due to snowfall and avalanches in winter at Patnitop, he said.